Big Flavor’s Day Off
Yesterday was my first game of the year and lemme tell ya, I really needed that one to re-charge my batteries. Watching a game on the telly or listening on the radio is fine but there is really nothing like being at the yard.
You do all sorts of things at a game you’d never do elsewhere. Like sing with people. Look, Big Flavor ain’t no campfire jockey. Sitting around and singing songs with other fellows is not how I roll. But get me out to a game and I’ll belt out a few lines to something patriotic or something sappy like “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”.
High fiving strangers and making small talk is also not on my usual list of activities but get me out to a game and I’ll high five the shit out of you if the moment calls for it and even act somewhat interested in convos you start…..
You’ve probably noticed a new feature at the blog. I’ve brought back the thumbs up/down ratings. They have been dormant for about 8 years ever since I added them and Twinfan emailed me repeatedly imploring me to take them down. He said they would encourage others to bully him. I know I said that like 5 times last night but it makes me lqtm every time I say it….
Have fun with the arrows and don’t take anything personally. I don’t foresee any problems. Although I am envisioning a scenario where I’m pitching a no hitter, I’m like 7-0, 10-0, maybe 12-0…all of a sudden some lone wolf fuck t-downs me late in the night and spoils it. Besides wanting to murder that dude I’m not foreseeing any problems…. 🙂
Some photos I took:
from our seats
Willie
lonely Cove
Me and Dave, he grew up across the street with me, I’ve known him since I was 10.
Great pics, thx. Was the yard sellout full?
Kruk said yesterday that Gorks was hurt last year and not fully healthy so he worked off season to get stronger.
Also that Powell the new hitting coach worked with him to get more lower body into his swing.
Believable or company line?
Looked at Gorks numbers last year. Each of first 2 months he was under .200 then hit over .300 each of next 3 and tailed off Sept. Each of those good months the BABIP was around .400 so he was getting a lot out of putting ball in play.
this year he is striking out even more than last year but with now 9 bombs and still close to .800 OPS.
Players are still getting busted right and left for PEDs, so I don’t know….
by the second inning the yard looked full except in the usually spots in the upper left field bleachers.
You both were wearing excellent shirts.
Nice to see the Flap “we score, we win” shirt!
i wear it every day…..lulz
What a great post. LMAO about Twin’s reaction to the thumbs up, thumbs down. It really would have been a riot to see his reaction everytime he got like 50 thumbs down per post, while everyone else would get like two or three thumbs up’s and no thumbs down. I could just hear him bitching about the lurkers going out of their way to hit thumbs down on his posts. He would want to know the identity of everyone who ever gave him a thumbs down.
HAHA, so true. I seem to remember Twin doxing commenters at the Splash that rubbed him the wrong way or trolled the forum.
Just noticed the Giants pitchers in 157 PAs are batting .057 with an OPS of 141. Most teams seem to be around 300. I’ll bet that level of incompetence has cost SF a win this year.
How about Giants pitcher fielding stats? I’ll venture SF is near the top in errors or other measures of defensive incompetence in that area…
I think our bunting stats are worse than our batting . . .
And Bummie’s absence hurts that as well.
Funny how many of us have bats laying around. I think I told the story of finding this bat (and a small gym bag with a mitt and a pro-style cap) at a game in 1978. A buddy and I had stuck around way after the game had ended and were just walking around down by 1st base side. Lost the mitt pretty quickly, lost the hat a dew years later, the bag fell apart in the 90s, but I still have the bat. It has a nice crack down by the handle that i taped with electrical tape.
I always hated Dale Murphy cuz he always seemed to kick our ass, but . . .
Apparently I need to up my taping game.
When TFLR came in late yesterday I thought for sure the wheels were coming off the Flavor Train.
Great pics, Craig. Haven’t been there in a good handful of years, always love the feeling of *being there*. Pitchers who can’t hit: if I was running a National League team, I would draft only pitchers who can hit or draft good pitchers but make hitting be a part of their game. It’d be like adding the DH except not. Fuck the risk of injury, hit, you wimps. And, bats, so cool to see these bats. For years, I had an Al Kaline Louisville Slugger that I’d stolen from Little League because I always got a hit with that fucker. It was cracked a bit, but I put a little screw in it, taped it up… Lost it somewhere along the way…
This group of Giants pitchers is one of the worst hitting and bunting groups ever for the Giants. Some of them are young guys who didn’t bat in the minors, but even Bum isn’t all that good as a hitter. He does have 17 HRs, but also a .181 career average, and a lot of strikeouts. There are times when I think he should be bunting, but Bochy is forever chasing an HR from Bum.
can Hanson just not bunt? There isn’t really another reason for why he was allowed to try to hit in that situation yesterday
This is an area where Bochy has been sabermetric over the years. He prefers a guy with power to be swinging in that situation.
I say that about Bum because he gets referred to in the media as a GREAT hitting pitcher.
He does have a lot of power, and the two grand slams in 2014 are an awesome feat (if I’m remembering that correctly), but he also has big droughts between those HRs. He can kill a lot of rallies, too.
Bum should never bat 8th. Maybe Bochy has finally given up on that.
Having said that, Chi and I were at the game where Bum hit the HR off of Kershaw and it was the winning run. Great great memory.
Ya gotta love memories at the yard like that. I love anytime I go to a game, but it is especially sweet when you win, and even more so in instances like this. Thanks for the memory, Zum!
Pence up to .196 after the booming double to win it yesterday.
I remember buying a Jacob Cruz used bat at a Giants dugout store for something like $40 back in the mid nineties. It was actually in pretty good shape overall. Pretty good size bat. Much like Jacob Cruz, I have no idea what happened to that bat.
Hitting I’m not too concerned about with the pitchers. Bunting? Fuck to the yes. This is something they CAN work on without the risk of doing something stupid.
I remember seeing Timmy get hit on his hand trying to bunt. Bad as it could have been, he was bunting left-handed to put his pitching hand farther out of harm’s way. I thought that was a good idea.
Batting Bummie 8th that game last week coulda cost the Giants a win. They had a rally die with bases loaded and 2 out.
Pence’s dribbler was a great memory that’ll never forget. But as I said yesterday, all he did was cobble together some past glory. It was all he could muster. He was absolutely awful prior to that and his hit did nothing other than give us all a fantastic memory— piled one more on top of so many. But please, for the love of God, no more Pence….
Glad you brought us a win, Flav, and damned, that is one fine shirt you are rocking there, brother!
Couldn’t agree more BF!
Every time Pence somehow squeaks a fart 💨 out of his lower body just enough to barely muster a wobbly baseball ⚾️ to the outfield grass, Boch will keep rewarding him with a start and say something ridiculous, like “Hunter’s really in a groove so I’m gonna ride a hot hand”
Kruk and Kuip were laughing about the exit velocity of Pence’s hits a few days ago. They were 78 and 66 MPH for his squibbers that somehow got through. I’m sure yesterday’s was not anything over 80 . . .
Didn’t Marquis Grissom just hang it up in August during his last season here? Or am I misremembering that?
I can sort if understand the FO handwringing over letting Pence go. But Actionless? The guy is invisible lately, but still taking a roster spot. Unlike Pence, he has no giants historical capital, so to keep him around like a vestigial organ is just nonsense from a baseball POV. So it has to be lux tax related. The FO can’t possibly think the fans care a whit about whether this guy stays or goes. Fans on the talk shows want Duggar and Slater…
institutional appendicitis is developing
Always liked Marquis Grissom, kind of had a swagger about himself like Jack Clark..
If I’m not mistaken I think 🤔Marquis Grissom hit the 1st ever HR at Petco Park!
With Pence, Panik and arguably McCutchen contributing so little offensively I really don’t get all the angst over Jackson. Maybe now that Hernandez has more or less put a lock on CF Bochy will use Jackson in the way that he’s been most successful over the last 1-2 years.
At this point, they’d eat $4.5 mill for MINAJ. BFD. Slater should be starting NOW. We can save Pence for his astounding ground attack late in worthless games. or mystery-injure him.
The point being, we need to keep pace with the Dogs and D-Bags. Somehow we have to escape the grip of .500 and the Pence/MINAJ black holes need to be jettisoned to give this team a boost. Reverend or no, Pence is not speechifying these days, he’s hanging on by his fingernails. Cut those nails . . .
Yeah, there was a time when teams carried less pitchers and had a lot of bench players, but that is no more. Carrying 13 pitchers means 4 bench guys. That’s it. Every bench spot is very valuable.
We all agree that Actionless and Pence need to go, but don’t hold your breath. It is all about money (luxury tax), and the Giants are not going down that path. It sucks, but I will be very surprised if anything happens, especially in the near future.
I guess when Longoria comes back theoretically there could be a tough choice made if Slater (or Mac) is doing great.
Shit, they could do without Pierce Johnson. Or Gearrin, Go with 12 pitchers for God’s sake.
How does cutting MINAJ affect the lux tax? Is it that we’d have to purchase Duggar’s contract to bring him up since he’s not on the 40-man??
Yeah, the Giants are so right at the edge of the tax, even a few hundred thousand dollars is enough to put them over. Unless they can trade away some contract money. But who? Would any team want Jackson?
I found an old wood bat from my 70s youth, “Approved Little League Frank Robinson,” when my father was clearing out some stuff recently, so I just had to take it back home with me. I don’t remember if I ever used it in an actual Little League game, but most certainly playing ball games in the backyard.
Fun fact: Joe Garagiola is the person who labeled Leornard’s HR trot “One Flap Down.”
Garagiola was the color analyst for the national TV broadcast of that series.
That information is directly from Leonard himself in an interview with Renell on the Giants’ home TV Network.
Sandoval is basically tracking his 2014 output even with his terrible numbers from the right side. I’d run him out at 3b and Hansen at 2b every day right now.
i truly believe that if Derek Law didn’t spend so much time taking photos with his wife he’d still be in the Bigs. Dude doesn’t seem to put enough into his trade.
They’re having a baby.
The party’s over…
I’m no expert at reading sonograms, but it looks to me like the Laws are expecting some type of terrier…
That’s about as awkward a kiss as you can pic.
I’m kicking it in Harvey the RV with a nice little Tecate buzz going. My daughter is here with me and her hotspot has allowed me to get on the Flap with my chromebook. Life is good.
Harvey and I had a rough summer last year with several breakdowns. It was the RV equivalent of Strickland’s 2014 post season. He ran like a champ today though. I know my co-owner has a bottle of Crown Royal stashed around here somewhere. Haven’t found it yet, but its early.
Dave Fleming has the call tonight for the ESPN game, Dodgers/Cubs.
The Cubs pitcher is a guy making his major league debut. Yikes.
Well who knows Zumie?Those 1st time pitchers debuting usually kick the Giants butts, as we turn them into Cy Young..
Chuck….Per BR Grissom was released by SF on August 2, 2005.
Quote on why he retired: “I decided to hang it up when it was taking longer in hours for me to prepare for a game then playing the game itself.’’
He had no problem hitting ’em out at Pac Bell (?) and speaking of bat taping K &K used to comment frequently on how heavily his bat handle was taped. It almost looked like it was in a cast…
I’d take Grissom over Actionless and it’s not even close…
I strongly support your new nickname for Jackson:
The Vestigial Organ (V.O.)
yeah right now
So where r we with Harvey? Is he retired now? Can you just sit inside of him while he sits wherever you parked him? Can he still go forward or backwards or are actions like that better spent on the younger RVs in the area?
Are we likin’ the like buttons?
“With Pence, Panik and arguably McCutchen contributing so little offensively . . .” No thumbs down, but how a usually sharp observer like Dirt suggests putting McC in the company of Pence AND justifies the plain, outright shittiness of Jackson in that context AND gets 3 thumbs up for it is . . . puzzling. Here are Jackson’s career lefty/righty splits:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=jacksau01&year=Career&t=b#plato::none
Thumbs down, James. I qualified it with arguably! lulz
McCutchen seemed to be heating up around the turn of the month but has settled in with a ~700 ops over the last 2 weeks. I’m not that impressed with him mostly because I was expecting more but he’s fine-better than what was patrolling RF last season despite some bizarre play on the defensive side.
Jackson has been mostly a role player the last couple of years and Bochy’s misused him as a started when he should be serving more as depth and spot starts. He’s low on my list of issues when LF and 2b aren’t giving the club much offensively. I would of preferred to see Williamson get another 50 ABs and combine with Slater (and Jackson) to round out the outfield. Jettisoning Pence is what’s needed but he’ll keep getting run despite sinking below Parker levels of suckitude.
Hah, I’m just too much of a gentleman! I thought I made a nod to the “arguably” with “suggests.” 😉
Thanks, DJ. I knew it was something like that.
Fricking Turner looks like he’s auditioning for the remake of The Hills Have Eyes . . .
The Cubs are flat as a pancake.
Without Bryant in the lineup, there’s not much going on.
Charlie – to your 2:57, and Zum’s 3:39 – The Giants are so tight on the luxury tax, that is exactly why they put Gearrin on waivers a couple of weeks ago. They were hoping he would be claimed, and it would save them what remains of his 1.675 mil. And hence, that’s why no way they eat Actionless or Pence’s salary.
It’s sadly funny that no one wanted Gearrin.
Taylor has a straight uppercut swing, and the Cubs pitcher threw the first pitch right at the low part of the strikezone where his barrel is. Yeah, that’s not going to work. Maybe manager and part-time rocket scientist and brain surgeon Maddon will figure that out.
Harvey the RV.
Is that the one in which out in the desert, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman cooked the Blue Meth?…
it bears a striking resemblance….
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTSvNz2KV0v_gi19EzZC_thBZE56gdTEIqCxscOf02af4QIRw
The RV was a big part early on — I really miss that show…
I actually do an annual binge watch of it, every autumn since the first time I binged on it in Fall of 2013 to catch up to real time episodes just as the last episode was showing in November 2013…. Still pick up on new things.